2009 Best Performances
4X200 FREE RELAY
| # | Country | Time | Team | IPS | Meet | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | GER | 5:14.14 | SG Dortmund | -2 | GERLCJUN |
| 2 |  | ITA | 7:56.69 | Italy | 990 | PESCRJUN |
| 3 |  | USA | 7:58.26 | USA Juniors | 985 | JRPACJAN |
| 4 |  | CHN | 8:00.85 | Shandong | 977 | CHNLCAPR |
| 5 |  | AUS | 8:02.49 | Australia | 972 | SCSCJUN |
Arena, a suit company whose business was put at serious risk by the worrying way in which the approval of a technological bomb called the LZR was handled, had a simple choice: fight or flight. An announcement today that it has signed two of the biggest stars of the Beijing Games, Cesar Cielo (BRA) and Milorad Cavic (SRB), confirms that there is much life left in the Italy-based company.
Unlike Nike, which has abandoned the pool in the wake of FINA's approval of technology that dominated the Olympic Games in Beijing and turned suits into performance-enhancing devices, Arena is planning to be a big player in a marketplace created by the politics of the pool over the past year.
Cielo, the Olympic 50m free champion who is heading for a period of training in Italy, and Cavic, training at the ADN Swim Project in Italy in the wake of falling just 0.02sec shy (0.01sec would have still left the other Mikey with eight golds) of ruining the Phelpsian dream in the 100m butterfly in Beijing, lend serious weight to the Arena Elite Team. The Brazilian's contract runs until the London 2012 Olympic Games, while Cavic is signed up until late 2010.
Their recruitment more than makes up for the loss of Filippo Magnini, the world champion sprinter who wobbled, abandoned Arena to wear the LZR and lost big time anyway. The Italian federation also lost its deal with Arena and saw its swimmers wear a golden Jaked suit in Beijing that drew howls of laughter from the stands, at least among the media.
Cielo is 21 and Cavic 24. They are likely still to be at the top of their game in the years ahead. Cielo said: "I’m really happy about this agreement with Arena, a company that has believed in me from the start of my competitive sports career. Now I’m planning to come to Italy for a period of training which will not only give me new experience in a country that I love, but it will also make it a whole lot easier for me to stay in day-to-day contact with my new technical sponsor, because they are based here in Italy. From the start of 2009 I’ll be getting back to my full training rhythm because I want to confirm my position at the 2009 World Championships in Rome and get some important results."
Cavic added: "This year has been really satisfying, starting with Eindhoven when, with Arena’s help, I became European champion in the 50m butterfly. The Olympics were a great experience that gave me a great deal as an athlete and as a man. Now Rieka will be a stage that will test my preparation with a view to the World Championships in Rome."
"Arena Elite Team is an international sponsorship project into which the company has made significant investments for several years," said Giuseppe Musciacchio, Arena Global Marketing director. "The objective is to create a group of carefully selected swimmers that combine talent and competitive motivation with a high level of professionalism and a keen desire to act as ambassadors for the brand in the world. At a time when swimming is going through an important evolutionary stage and is moving ever more into the limelight, being alongside these young athletes, as well as all the other key factors in the swimming world (governing bodies, federations, clubs) represents for our company the most natural way to pursue our mission and our communication objectives."
Cielo and Cavic will now form part of a team that will help with the research and development of a suit that aims to swim past the LZR in the race to find fast technologies under FINA's laissez-faire regime. The Lausanne-based outfit run by Mustapha Larfaoui - who aims to take on Treasurer Julio Maglione in what is turning into an unseemly race to keep hold of the FINA crown for an unprecented sixth four-year term - has all but handed the future of the sport to a form of engineering that may well cost the international federation its control of the sport.
FINA, unprepared to accept the overwhelming tide of scientific evidence that the LZR definitively enhances performances, appears ill-equipped and unfit for purpose when it comes to either understanding the complex world of high-tech fibres, their so-far untestable interaction with the human body beyond anything that the LZR can lay claim to, or their ability to retain control by formulating appropriate rules to deal with a fast-changing world that is on a course to overtake them in the way that doping did with a vengeance in the 1970s, 80s and 1990s.
Arena, of course, are all but blameless in whatever may come to pass. We recall that it was Arena, World Cup sponsor, alone at the Manchester world short-course championships (that served as the global shop window for the LZR) back in April, that called on FINA to draw a technological line to preserve the purity of the sport. That call fell on ears deafened by the drop of the dollar (or rather millions of them under the contracts signed with suit makers for the Olympic cycle) in the till of guardians who ought to know better. No-one can ever say that they were not warned.
